Syrup & Honey
by teamspade
Summary: This wasn't her. This was not the Jade West that he'd known and grown to love. This was someone else, a devil wearing her porcelain face as a mask, her skin as clothes, nothing more than a disguise of pathetic deceit. He refused to be the victim of such calamity.


_Ken Hensley wrote, "it is hard to understand addiction unless you have experienced it._"

Her appearance was to be expected; unkempt, yet intoxicating – almost hypnotizing. He found himself sinking further into his shell, and maintaining reverential eye contact was more than a challenge for a man of such oddity and inquisitiveness, an old soul.

She'd lost weight since the last time he saw her – at least a full five and a half pounds – and her pale leathery skin, on the verge of jaundice, was clinging to her delicate skeletal frame. The white silk robe thrown around her emaciated shoulders gave her away, though it was no secret to begin with.

Loud, aggressive music poured from the small apartment, a cloud of smoke dancing in the windowsill behind her. The sun was just beginning to set over the hectic city, casting shadows upon the floor and enhancing the warm angelic glow around the girl. She brought a cigarette up to her cherry red lips, lipstick smudged down her chin, looking the thin agent up and down as she invaded her lungs with the poison.

"Hello, Dr. Reid," she slurred almost incoherently, smoky and mysterious, talking above the music. Her greasy hair fell over her heavy eyelids in a black cascade as she forced a numb smile, exhaling a puff of smoke into his general vicinity. "What brings you around these parts?" Her voice was raw and thick, unctuous and filled with sarcasm, like she'd just been awoken from a deep sleep.

"I…" he hesitated, attempting to peek around her shoulder. "I just wanted to check up on you, see how you were doing. I haven't seen you around lately." He shifted on his feet and shoved his hands in his front pants pockets, something he always did when he was nervous or uncomfortable, something that he wasn't even aware of; a dead giveaway. You didn't have to be a behaviour analyst to notice something so seemingly obvious, staring you right in the face.

His words penetrated her ears in a deep buzzing sound, and the exceptionally loud music expelling from the antique record player behind her surely wasn't helping the vexatious condition.

With a hand propped up on the doorframe, she shrugged, struggling to keep her eyelids open "Well…" she took another long drag of her cigarette, her blurry eyes attempting to focus on the bright reddish flame racing up the filter with each exaggerated breath she took. "I'm not dead yet." Ashes trickled to the floor. "Are you here to whisk me away from this awful _prison_, O Romeo?"

Reid pinned his eyebrows together. She didn't even attempt to hide her habit anymore, which was concerning. For as long as he's known her, she's always been discreet about it, embarrassed; now it almost seemed like she didn't care, like she'd given up. Like it was all a joke to her. This wasn't her. This was not the Jade West that he'd known and grown to love. This was someone else, a devil wearing her porcelain face as a mask, her skin as clothes, nothing more than a disguise of pathetic deceit. He refused to be the victim of such calamity.

She reached out, and with the cigarette tight between her fingers, ran a hand over his purple tie. Her clear blue eyes glistened, pinpoint pupils left soulless and unwanted, desperate to be loved. Tucked beneath a grey sweater vest, she retrieved the silk tie and slowly pulled his face in closer to hers. Her tobacco-scented breath was warm on his face, and she trailed her black chipped fingernails along the curve of his jawline, sending shivers down his spine; her cigarette traced a ladder in front of his eyes and for once the young prodigy was rendered speechless.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, gathering his cluttered thoughts. "Can I, uh… come in?"

She drew back from him, leading him into her apartment with laze, heavy limbs weighing her down, making it difficult to move around with ease, shoulders slumped in lethargy and her spine quite evident beneath her robe, worn out. Reid took particular notice in this, as he always did, though refrained from pointing out such obvious actions which he was most confident she was already fully aware of.

She fell down to the mattress and lit another cigarette, her eyes closing shut almost instinctively as she continued to puff on her cancer stick. "Don't you want to sit down?"

He looked around at his surroundings, spinning clockwise to take it all in. He wouldn't normally profile a friend, especially one so dear to him, but it was breaking his heart not knowing everything she's gone through within the last year, six months, five days and nine hours. Then again, maybe it were better if he didn't know.

He continued to scan the small rancid apartment, taking particular notice in the plastic container of homemade soup left on the counter. He remembered Garcia telling the team that she had dropped off a warm meal out of pure generosity no more than one month prior. Though the green and white mildew growing along the inside of the translucent Tupperware suggested that it was untouched and left there deliberately to rot. He wondered if she'd bother to eat at all since then, or if she even had the appetite.

Alongside lipstick-stained cigarettes were used syringes and empty baggies, scattered careless and dangerously across the bare floor, where a patch of musty carpeting left by the previous rentee had been torn up. Blue fibers along the floorboards suggested it must not have been too long ago, however it was hard for him to tell when the last time she cleaned up the place was. Other than a stack of mattresses and an old record player atop a warped dresser in the far corner, there was no furniture to be found. She had sold nearly all of her personal belongings to support herself.

Growing more and more distracted, he almost forgot her question. "I just got off a five hour flight. I'd rather stand," he said, taut.

She was picking at her nails rather than her face, and landing enclosed fists into the side of her thighs, implying that it's been quite a while since she last used. Six hours by his calculations, though depending on how badly she could've down-spiraled since the last time they saw each other, he might've been off by an hour or two.

"I see you cut your hair," she said, breaking him from whatever Mind Palace he'd vacationed off to.

He reached up to scratch the nape of his neck, tilting his head toward the floor. "Yeah. One year, five months, twelve days ago. Seven inches off. Thank you for noticing."

She stared at him, silent, exhaling a stream of smoke directly into his face, causing him to choke, though he hid it well. She put out her cigarette on the nicotine-stained mattress directly beneath her and flicked the butt across the empty, confined room, not breaking eye contact for one second. "I don't like it."

Distant, he crossed his arms over his chest to examine her further, his stance widened. She stared back at him, unreadable, showing no emotion. They each waited for the other to crack, to blink, to do anything other than feed into the uncomfortable tension hanging over the room in pink cloud.

Finally, after no longer than a minute, Jade sighed in defeat. "What are you looking at?" Bouncing her restless legs up and down, she subconsciously dug her nails into her forearm, where scars and bruises covered nearly every inch of her from the inside of her elbow, downward, veins invisible and collapsed beneath the chaos.

"I'm just trying to figure out why you're so anxious." She raised her eyebrows, confident, encouraging him to continue with his brutal analysis. She was humouring him, to say the least. He took a step closer, his eyebrows furrowed. "You're fidgety, agitated," he said, bringing his hands up to his chest to form words as he spoke, a constant presentation in a world full of constant disarray. "Biting your nails, throwing punches at yourself to relieve – what I assume – are deep ridden muscle aches. And then there's the psychosomatic irritancy of delusional parasitosis – a million insects under your skin, right?" He waited for her to respond, though continued before she had to chance to argue. "Now, if I didn't know any better, I'd say these are common symptoms of early opiate withdrawal, which are soon followed by overpowering cravings, excessive tearing in the eyes and nose, stomach irritation and bowel excretion, leading up to that dreaded – as you would call it – dopesickness. Which only comes across those of whom have used for a prolonged amount of time. A constant, every day extension of, I'd say, two or three months to be on the safe side of things. Unless, of course, I'm mistaken, and we both know that's not the case."

_Now you're just showing off, _she thought.

"You sound like you speak from experience."

His eyes shifted from hers to the floor, and then back up again, disregarding her observation. He rarely ever spoke of his own struggle with anyone other than JJ, who was always willing to be a distraction, which were his exact intentions for Jade.

She was rolling her right ring finger between her left thumb index finger again, where she used to wear her mother's ring. She must have hocked that as well, he thought. Judging on the dryness and cracking of the skin just below the third knuckle, she must have missed her mom quite often, even though she's had more than ten years to grieve her abrupt disappearance. Jade had been numbing herself for so long that she couldn't possibly know how to handle real emotions the minute she let herself sober up. The only thing she'd ever known was to run away and hide, lock herself up in the dark and block out the rest of the world.

Reid nodded towards her fidgety hands. "You miss your mom again."

"How did you…?"

"Body language," he said, sparing the fine details for once, giving her an awkward smile.

"Spencer," she asserted, almost hateful, frustrated. "How many times have I told you not to profile me?"

"Thirty-two times. Thirty-three if you're including right now." She stared at him, her frustration turning to a deadly combination of anger and annoyance. "Was… was that a rhetorical question?"

"Look," she said, clearing her throat, raising to her feet so her lifeless eyes could meet with his. He backed up a step or two. "Cut the foreplay and tell me exactly what you're doing here. I'm a little busy, as you can see."

He cowered away from her, shrinking himself in a tight shrug, degraded by her austerity. His voice was lowered, and he looked over her shoulder as he spoke, avoiding eye contact. "Actually, I don't see that at all. You're just… wasting away, deteriorating in a tiny cell that you call your home. Doesn't that bother you?" He wondered when the last time she had any human interaction was, interaction with someone other than a dealer or an addict or a combination of the two.

Offended, she avoided his question entirely, and as blunt as possible, she sneered, "you said it yourself; I need a fix. Now. So get out." Her bones twisted and her limbs trembled as she began to sweat out an ice-cold fever, scorching blood boiling to the surface of her skin, pain intensifying the longer she waited to give in to her habit's ruthless demands. She would have done _anything_ to avoid the sickness, _anything_ for the drug that she loathed more than _anything_ else in the world; and to her, _that_ was true love.

Reid stared at the frail girl with a hint of sorrow in his eyes. He'd never seen her like this before. "I'd like to stay if you don't mind." He was starting to doubt if someone as stubborn and hardheaded as Jade could ever be helped. He was afraid that he was too late, that he'd lost her for good, that there wasn't a sprinkle of hope or willpower left within her. He wasn't sure what he hoped to accomplish by confronting her, but if he was sure of one thing – just _one_ thing – it was not giving up on her for a single second. No matter how hard she fought, no matter how much she refused, he was going to be there fighting for her – encouraging her – even when there's nothing left to fight for.

"Whatever, but I'm cooking up whether you're here or not. I don't have time to play these games with you. And I don't want any crap about it either."

"Jade…"

She waved him off, full of contempt, and took a seat on the floor, Indian style, surrounded by her needles and burnt silver spoons – her only friends. She had absolutely no recognition of which syringes were used and who she had previously shared them with, and quite frankly, she didn't care. All she cared about was cooking up and flushing out her fever with a wave of heat and bliss and clarity before the real sickness and pain took over.

Without any further delay, she reached for a syringe and her last two bags, tipping the powdered contents into the curvature of her spoon. She bit her lip in anticipation and retrieved her coffee mug from alongside the mattress, drawing up a good amount of the tepid water before shooting it straight down into the spoon.

Reid turned his back on her, averting his attention to a pile of notebooks and loose leaf paper stacked neatly beside her collection of vinyl, the only organized section in the whole apartment, telling him that she clearly cared a great deal about it. Music was something she was strongly passionate about, possibly the only thing she loved more than the drugs that had taken over every aspect of her life.

For Reid, it was reassuring to know that she had continued writing, even when her head was most polluted and she was the most distracted and withdrawn from every aspect of society. Her writing was the only thing to keep her going when she felt like giving up, and he admired that about her.

Jade held her favourite zippo lighter underneath the spoon, watching the water bubble and turn tan as the sweet smell of vinegar burned her delicate nostrils. She dropped in a tick of cotton and drew the poison up into the barrel, setting the hot syringe off to the side to cool as she tied off her arm with an elastic tourniquet.

The thrash metal record spun out in the corner and the room grew quiet, near silent.

And that was it. That was the battle she faced every single day – she was at war with herself, and she was losing.

Nonchalant about his intentions, Reid peeked over his shoulder to make sure Jade was preoccupied before fingering through some of her unfinished work. It was impressive, to say the least; dark and passionate and soulless, and it projected a brilliant view of the world inside of her tortured mind – something that was all too familiar to him.

Beneath the stack of scribbled poems lay a paperback copy of Patrick Suskind's original German edition _Perfume, _the cover torn and the spine cracked and worn, suggesting it had been read more than a handful of times. With his less-dominant hand, his right side facing his best friend, Reid flipped the book open to the title page.

_"Jade,"_ it read in familiar handwriting, letters alternating between uppercase and lowercase out of habit and a signature of uniqueness. _"I hope this is as thought-provoking for you as it was for me. Happy 18th Birthday. Love, Spencer."_

Directly under the signature was a stained coffee ring, the ink smudged as if the letters had been heavily stroked. He closed the book again and the cover bounced back open to the same page, refusing to shut without a good amount of weight to hold it down.

It was his own personal copy, he realized, which was in near perfect condition before he had handed it down to her just about two years prior. He gave it to her as a gift, thinking she would never pick it up to read a single page. This just proved how wrong he was about her.

"Spencer," Jade said from behind, startling him; he dropped a stack of papers to the floor and muttered incoherent vowels to himself before kneeling down to collect the clutter. "What are you doing?" She sounded more relaxed than before, less irritated; there was a heaviness weighing on her voice.

"I was just, uh…" he raised back up to his feet, quickly, a few more pages plummeting as he placed the others back on the dresser, nearly losing his footing in the process, and turned around to face her. "Nothing."

He bent down to pick up the rest of his mess, though was interrupted by a low "leave it" from the girl staring him down with narrow eyes, as if she'd been looking into the sun for too long, her lips slightly parted, head bobbing.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded and patted the floor beside her, inviting him to join her, surrounded by paraphernalia, which he had to tip-toe around and nudge off to the side with the tip of his shoe before even thinking about sitting down, in fear of being stuck with a foreign object.

"I'm sorry about before," she said after he'd gotten settled by her side, her head on his shoulder and her breath hot and steady against his neck. He stroked her hair in reassurance and once more looked over the clutter spread out across the floor, his back pressed against the uncomfortable stack of mattresses.

The room had fallen dark, the only light being provided by nearby businesses and billboards.

"When are you going to stop this?" He whispered, worried.

She ignored his question, and instead mumbled a gentle "stay with me", her eyes growing more and more heavy with each prolonged second that ticked by.

And he did, until the dawn of a new day.


End file.
